For Great Justice

I actually really like Bearcat Lee. Cool throwback vibe to it.

New Day / Bloodline on Raw. I appreciate the newfound, completely coincidental sense of urgency with WWE’s booking. If it leads to good wrestling on my TV, I hope they keep doing stuff like that.

It brings me immense joy that the 2021 version of Big Bubba Rogers or Meng is Taz’s 22 year old kid.

Kaz and Spears have a little Great Value Randy Orton in them, in the sense that their peers absolutely love their work and consider them fantastic as everything in-ring is timed and executed at a high level, but the audience just doesn’t care. Orton’s work is better and the crowd cares more, but they are on the lower end of that same spectrum IMO.

We’re definitely going to get the lunch menu version of the match instead of the dinner version. I’d think draw, Danielson winning, or Omega getting frustrated and winning with brass knucks or something (and absolutely hating himself for it) are all on the table.

Miro is going to run over Fuego’s car in the tank, isn’t he?

Alright Queens. Time to bring half time Red Bulls and load up on the power naps on Tuesday because you have the challenge of staying lit for two more hours AFTER you get Omega / Danielson! I know you have it in you.

Omegas t shirt Easter egg game went full on David Lynch tonight. After that promo he went back to the red room. Edit: oh shit, maybe he really is turning babyface after all this, and that’s exactly what it means.

Much like The Suzuki Incident, life continues to imitate art and Hook has gone from meme to social media phenomenon. The crowd is going to legitimately come unglued when he finally debuts, and I’m here for all of it.

McGillicutty has to be up there, if not the winner. I actually dug Husky Harris (and Skip Sheffield). Bull Dempsey was a name I could get down with too, but should’ve gone to a trucker that just breaks arms and arm wrestles. For your consideration: Brayden Walker, The Viking Experience If Sylvester Turkay wasn’t the dude’s real name, it’d be on the list.

I was thinking about them inserting Beverly Khali into the main event last night, and it wouldn’t surprise me if “we’re not going to have a single match on this show that doesn’t have a developmental talent in it” was one of those Vince mandate deals. Which I’m not even complaining about as that’s a concept I can get behind, but feels like something like that and then the writers dropping the ball on a creative way to get there.

It's so unfortunate. I mean, the dude's real name is Bronson. That's a bad ass name! Bronson Steiner, former NFL fullback, son of a legend, built like a brick shithouse throwing geeks around for a year is the easiest booking on the planet.

I have fond memories of our prospect power ranking discussion as part of the original NXT game show threads and should probably revive that if this is going to be the format of the show going forward. Bron looked great, stupid name aside. It was weird to ignore his history yet drop a “dogface gremlin” line on commentary. I’m fine with him as the face of the new batch of kids The two guys that fought Imperium and the ladies with Mandy look like hamandeggers. Not a bad vignette promo by the mafia character guy. Combining that gimmick with an amateur in ring style is an interesting combo. Von Wagner’s gait and jawline / sunken eyes looks like Great Khali and I can’t unsee it.

Bron’s Steiner line out of the corner looked just like his dad’s in a spooky way, just in the way his body moved. Made me do a double take.

Besides the Dunn Cuts (and that’s not to understate them, because it is indeed a travesty) I loved everything about this. The colors, the lit up studio wrestling style crowd, the focus on true developmental talent. This is far more my jam than the super Indy era of the show. And a legit funny, entertaining, heartwarming wrestling wedding! That ruled.

I see value in Gargano as a tag guy. There really isn’t a veteran tag equivalent to TH2 on the babyface side to work with younger talent on Dark. Gargano and a guy like Roderick Strong if he becomes available would fit the bill there.

Raw in particular is so oftentimes on the treadmill of “we have a show to do” and not strategic with its storytelling. Get through the show, get to next week, get through that show. Thus the operational treadmill of rematches and segments being done and redone over and over. Just filling the time because it has to be filled. When Vince IS strategic with his storytelling - and this is usually due to outside pressure, in this case losing the demo to AEW - he can do some good stuff. It’s fun to watch a Raw that doesn’t reek of “just get to the next show”.

Bloodline/New Day at Survivor Series should be a MOTYC

I have been wondering if MJF was doing the zero-effort cheap heat stuff ironically or if he wasn’t really that talented, and I think it’s clear that he really isn’t that talented. The delivery of the words out of his mouth signifies talent and gets people thinking “wow what a prospect,” but the actual nature of the promos tell me to get him off my TV. It’s the heel promo equivalent of flippy shit for the sake of doing flippy shit. It sucks.

I, for one, hope it set the business back 25 years

Darby turns on Sting? I love Andrade. To me he perfected and was the best example of the peak NXT main event style before it all went to shit. He’s so good at knowing when to slow it down and when to go warp speed. And similar to how it’s been a nice breath of fresh air for Malakai Black to bring that slowdown into the promotion, it’ll be good with Andrade as well IMO.

Not a simple task in my opinion! Who right now in US pro wrestling has equal or more natural physical charisma than Sid? I'd say Asuka, Darby Allin, Big E, maybe a few others. You can't coach being Sid.

I think Cage and Hobbs would have worked with the Fire and Ice idea we all threw around a while back. You could even run an APA deal where Taz took bribes from whoever's willing to pay for them to fuck guys up. I don't think Cage's ceiling as a singles in AEW is any higher than where he is now.

He’s not WWE Big is he? Seems like he’s more or less Buddy Murphy’s size edit: well that’s a tag team I didn’t realize I wanted that would kick ass